Archive for April, 2010

John Avalon has written “Stand with South Park!” in reference to Comedy Central (again!) cravenly censoring Mohammed out of the show while leaving all other caricatures and criticisms untouched, and an Islamic group making threats against the lives of the show’s creators.

Don’t screw with South Park – and don’t ever try to intimidate us into accepting Sharia law. That’s the message Americans are sending upon news that the comedy team of Trey Parker and Matt Stone had received a fatwa-esque death threat for their 200th episode, which featured the Muslim prophet Mohammed dressed in a bear-mascot suit. The obscure New York City-based Islamist supremacist group Muslim Revolution issued the warning alongside graphic images of the murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh. Their message read: “We have to warn Matt [Stone] and Trey [Parker] that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show. This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.” Courage is rare and it deserves to be rewarded.

Surrendering to threats of violence only encourages them to make further demands; and every surrender makes the next surrender easier until there’s nothing left to surrender. Free speech is a God-given right that some of us aren’t prepared to give up.

“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” –Theodore Roosevelt

Well, promiscuous women in revealing clothing have been known to rock my world from time to time. Still, if that were true, wouldn’t you see more earthquakes in areas where more skin is displayed (I’m looking at you, Rio!) and less in countries where women are hidden under tarpaulins?

Iran is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries, and the cleric’s unusual explanation for why the earth shakes follows a prediction by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that a quake is certain to hit Tehran and that many of its 12 million inhabitants should relocate. … Seismologists have warned for at least two decades that it is likely the sprawling capital will be struck by a catastrophic quake in the near future…

The catastrophic disaster soon to strike Iran has little to do with promiscuous women and much to do with the Israeli Air Force, inshallah.

“Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes,” Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media.

For proof, he cited figures from NASA and Hadley CRU, and the collected scientific works of Al Gore. The reliability, credibility, and adherence to rigorous scientific methodology is the same.

In 2003, a powerful earthquake hit the southern city of Bam, killing 31,000 people – about a quarter of that city’s population – and destroying its ancient mud-built citadel.

First suggestion: Don’t name any of your cities “Bam”, “Pow”, or “Ka-Boom”. Second suggestion: if they’re anywhere near a fault line, built them out of something other than mud. What century is this, again? What exactly is Iran spending all of those petrodollars on?

Ahmadinejad made his quake prediction two weeks ago but said he could not give an exact date.

I predict that an earthquake will hit San Francisco. I cannot give an exact date. Still, the only way to be safe is to immediately worship me and give all earthly power to me.

(H/T: WeaselZippers.) All of the proven racist epithets, calls to violence, and actual violence at Town Hall meetings and Tea Parties has been perpetrated by the Left and directed at the Right. The most inflammatory writings on-line also come from the Left. And yet the media, still with its head up its collective arse, continues to decry the anger and “un-American” hatred coming from those who oppose Obama and simply want to exercise their (formerly) Constitutional rights to patriotic dissent.

In another example of the Democrats planning to repeat history because they fail to learn from it, the Democrats are planning to run against George W. Bush in 2010. To the best of my knowledge, George W. Bush is not running for any office, nor does he currently hold any position of power – and unlike certain other former presidents (such as Carter and Clinton), Bush isn’t running his mouth off denigrating the country nor any of its current leaders, either. So, why are the Dems going to run against him, rather than run against any of the people actually opposing them, or to run on any of the actual issues that are of importance to America? Because they don’t want to go down in flames, of course! They’re hoping that the scarecrow of Dubya will be any effective rallying point for their troops.

Problem is, as Obama continues to drop in the polls, and people realize that George W. Bush really wasn’t that bad (because Obama is actually doing all of the things they’d falsely accused Bush of doing; and all of the Bush policies that they hated are still being performed by Obama), Obama is losing ground to Bush.

Perhaps the greatest measure of Obama’s declining support is that just 50% of voters now say they prefer having him as President to George W. Bush, with 44% saying they’d rather have his predecessor. Given the horrendous approval ratings Bush showed during his final term that’s somewhat of a surprise and an indication that voters are increasingly placing the blame on Obama for the country’s difficulties instead of giving him space because of the tough situation he inherited.

Why did I refer to this as repeating history? Because when George W. Bush was still president, and popular, the Democrats needed another bogeyman to scare people in line with their candidates – so they decided to run against Ronald Reagan. They tried to “smear” Bush by comparing him to Reagan, and so forth, completely oblivious to the fact that most of the country still had positive feelings about Reagan – far more positive than the feelings they had against the cut-and-run disloyal-opposition Democrats. Comparing Bush to Reagan was a compliment, and may even have helped the Republicans.

So we’ll hate him. Because he can take it. Because he’s not our hero. He’s a silent gaurdian. A watchful protector. A dark knight. (source)

In the clearest sign yet that Obama’s plan is to accelerate the decline of America’s superpower status, Obama went to the Florida Spacecoast on Thursday to tell NASA employees that he is canceling much of the manned space program including plans to return to the moon. Instead, Obama will shoot for landing on an asteroid. … Obama’s action means the U.S. will no longer have the capability to launch men into orbit after the last Space Shuttle launch on September 16, 2010. Instead we will have to depend on the Russians for access to the International Space Station. The technological advantage that NASA had in the 20th Century and which fueled decades of American economic and technological development will be lost along with 7,000 key jobs in advanced space related fields.

Ocala, Florida — For the first time in more than 150 years, a candidate is running for federal office under the Whig Party. On Thursday, Craig Porter of Miami became qualified to run for Congress’ 25th District in South Florida as a member of the Florida Whig Party. The Whig Party was once one of the two major political parties of the United States, from 1833 to 1856. Two U.S. presidents were elected from the Whig Party, William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor. Both died in office, and were succeeded by John Tyler and Millard Fillmore. Fillmore was the last Whig to hold the nation’s highest office. The Florida Whig Party is a more recent creation, having formed in 2006. A press release announcing Porter’s eligibility to run for Congress listed … eight key issues for his platform.

Interesting. The Florida Whig Party, created in 2006, predates by a few years the current Tea Parties, but appears (according to that press release) to share the same philosophy and goals. Unfortunately, running as a third party candidate (and thus splitting the votes on your side of the spectrum) is usually a recipe for letting the other side win. (That’s why the Dems tried to run a bogus Tea Party candidate in Nevada to siphon off GOP votes and save Harry Reid’s reelection – a gambit which is currently unlikely to succeed, although a lot can happen in the next seven months.) The short news article above doesn’t say anything about the other candidate(s) in the race.

…The New York Times is preparing to go public with a list of names of Americans covertly working in Afghanistan providing force protection for our troops, as well as the rest of our Coalition Forces. If the Times actually sees this through, the red ink they are drowning in will be nothing compared to the blood their entire organization will be covered with. Make no mistake, the Times is about to cause casualty rates in Afghanistan to skyrocket. Each and every American should be outraged. As chronicled here, here, here, and here the Central Intelligence Agency via The New York Times has been waging a nasty proxy war against the Department of Defense over its use of former military and intelligence personnel to do what the CIA is both incapable and unwilling to do: gather the much needed intelligence that keeps our troops safe. … thanks to the beating the folks on the 7th floor at Langley and The New York Times have taken in the blogosphere, they are about to go for broke and to do so in a fashion so grotesque that every American should be moved to action. … They are not only putting at risk the lives of the brave men and women working day and night to keep our troops safe (who, along with their families, will surely be targeted for retribution by al Qaeda and the Taliban), but they are also calling down a host of legal woes via the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (made famous in the Valerie Plame affair under the George W. Bush Administration) as the intelligence gathered and reported on by the Defense Department operatives in question is most definitely classified. … What the Central Intelligence Agency and The New York Times has cooked up is a recipe for unmitigated disaster and we used to have a word for it in our lexicon. We called it treason…

Isn’t it too bad that the US stopped prosecuting and executing people for treason so many decades ago, allowing it to not only prosper but become fashionable on the left? I said, in reference to another case a few years back, that it would just take one successful prosecution to make any number of other traitors to think twice. The Left, after all, loves to brag about their own “courage” in protesting and standing up to “injustice” and speaking “truth” to “power”; but the fact is that they are bullies who only protest when it’s safe and go after people who don’t fight back. That’s why they attack Mormons for being against gay marriage but never hold protests in front of mosques that call for homosexuals to be stoned to death. Their anti-war protests were only directed against America, and PETA is famous for throwing blood on old ladies in fur coats but never bikers in leather. Hollywood liberals constant applaud each other’s “bravery” for advocating opinions which are universally accepted by everyone around them. Well, The New York Times knows, after everything they got away with under George W. Bush, and considering who sits in the White House now, that they are almost certain to get away with this as well if they pull it off. I really hope they’re wrong.

The law apparently bars members of Congress from the federal employees health program, on the assumption that lawmakers should join many of their constituents in getting coverage through new state-based markets known as insurance exchanges. But the research service found that this provision was written in an imprecise, confusing way, so it is not clear when it takes effect. The new exchanges do not have to be in operation until 2014. But because of a possible “drafting error,” the report says, Congress did not specify an effective date for the section excluding lawmakers from the existing program. Under well-established canons of statutory interpretation, the report said, “a law takes effect on the date of its enactment” unless Congress clearly specifies otherwise. And Congress did not specify any other effective date for this part of the health care law. The law was enacted when President Obama signed it three weeks ago.

In other words, members of Congress were stripped of their health care policies three weeks ago, and won’t be given new policies until 2014. This is, in a way, hilarious (and tinged with schadenfreude), although we all know that Congress will either disregard the error or quickly fix it. I guess it would have helped if they had actually read the damned thing before voting on it in the first place? Anyway, the Times points out:

If they did not know exactly what they were doing to themselves, did lawmakers who wrote and passed the bill fully grasp the details of how it would influence the lives of other Americans?

Unlike Congress, we can’t disregard or amend errors or flaws (or deliberate premeditated rationing and withholding of care!), nor can we expect them to act promptly and diligently on our behalf to correct things in our favor. AllahPundit ends with the question:

Exit question for lawyers: Who would have standing to sue to force the federal health plan to drop Congress now? Any citizen, or is it more refined than that?

Force the bastards to lose their coverage. They’re mostly multimillionaires who regard paying taxes as optional; so it would only be inconvenient for them, not life-threatening, after all. And then, filibuster any “fix” the Dems propose for ObamaCare which doesn’t “fix” (or repeal) the rest of the damned thing for the rest of us.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie isn’t laughing about a teachers union’s memo that hints of his death. … The Record of Bergen County obtained the Bergen County Education Association memo that includes a closing prayer: “Dear Lord this year you have taken away my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze, my favorite actress, Farrah Fawcett, my favorite singer, Michael Jackson, and my favorite salesman, Billy Mays. I just wanted to let you know that Chris Christie is my favorite governor.”